One thing that religion provides is community. I believe that people need to belong to a community and that pure individualism is very unhealthy and politically dangerous.

The alternative of religion isn't necessarily pure individualism. In our modern (or post-modern) age there are many ways of living in communities other than through religion.

For myself, an atheist, religion is nothing more than just one of a plethora of kinds of common platforms for communication. Being an atheist, I am disengaged from religious bonds, and this gives me freedom to move across religions when communicating with people. So when a Muslim says "as-Salamu Alaykum" ("Selamün Aleyküm" in Turkish) I can respond with "wa Alaykumu s-Salam" ("Aleyküm Selam" in Turkish) without hesitation, and when a Christian says "Christos Anesti" I can respond with "Alithos Anesti" without hesitation. So I can somewhat become Muslim to the Muslims, Christian to the Christians, Jew to the Jews, and so on.

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